10 September 2013

Marwan Lahoud, EADS chief strategy and marketing officer, said on the sidelines of a French defense industry event in Pau that testing for the A350, was going well."There have been no new problems on the A350. The flight tests are going according to plan. We are getting on with the program and we are confident of meeting our goals for certification and first delivery."

Didier Evrard and Marwan Lahoud on the First Flight last June

"During a certification test campaign of a new aircraft, the aircraft flies but also spends time on the ground to be modified and updated”, he explained."This utilization rate (the average number of hours that an aircraft is actually in flight during each 24-h period)has never been reached before on another plane. Everything works correctly", he said, but Airbus remains" extremely careful: everyday you can fall on a bone ".Everything is going well on the flight test campaign and they go “like clockwork “ («marchent comme une lettre à la poste», in french) said Marwan Lahoud. During the annual meeting of politicians, military and industrial that is held at the summer-University in Pau, he insisted that Airbus is confident to deliver as expected the first aircraft to Qatar next year.

From left to right:

Lahoud: “Tests go like clockwork”

Enders: "It is going very, very well”

Bregier "So far so good"

To keep the target of the aircraft delivery plan, Airbus needs to ramp up the production to 3 aircraft per month in 2014 and increase progressively to 10 aircraft per month in 2018.